Virgin Galactic christens the VSS Enterprise

On a cold and windy night at the Mojave Air and Space Port, the VSS Enterprise was unveiled to the public. Attached to its mother ship, the vehicle better known as SpaceShipTwo is expected to be the first commercial spacecraft when it enters service with Virgin Galactic.

SpaceShipTwo was built by Scaled Composites under the guidance of legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan. The carbon composite spacecraft uses the same fuselage as its mother ship, VMS Eve (which is named after Branson's mother). After a year of rigorous testing VMS Eve completed flight testing earlier this autumn. Rutan didn't specify when flight testing for SpaceShipTwo would begin, although it is expected to start early next year.

Sub-orbital passenger flights could start as early as 2011 from Virgin Galactic's space port in New Mexico which is currently under construction. Tickets for the early adopters are $200,000 (£60,000) for a training program culminating with the ride into space. Both Rutan and Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson have repeatedly said they expect the prices to drop rapidly as they do with many new technologies, including the early days of air travel.

Once flight testing is complete, production will begin on a fleet of space craft like SpaceShipTwo in order to meet the expected demand for rides into space. Rutan and Branson have partnered in a company known simply as 'The Spaceship Company". The joint venture will produce both the WhiteKnightTwo mother ships and the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. Rutan says he expects that 40-50 spaceships will be needed in order to satisfy the market needs. Branson's Virgin Galactic has the exclusive use of the launch system for the first 18 months of operation.

Rutan said tonight's unveiling is the culmination of many years of thinking, designing and working on making space travel more accessible to more people outside the ranks of government space programs.

"All of us at Scaled are tremendously excited by the capabilities of both the mothership and SS2. Today is the culmination of a dream that began many decades ago, was stimulated by Paul Allen's funding of our X-Prize winning SS1 and then moved forward to commercial reality by Sir Richard and Virgin's visionary investment in a new future for space transportation".

Branson said seeing SpaceShipTwo for the first time is very exciting and he is now looking forward to the next steps towards commercial space flights.

"The unveiling of SS2 takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this ambitious project is not only moving rapidly, but also making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation."

In a video released by Virgin Galactic (above), both Rutan and Branson continue their salesmen jobs promoting the passenger flights into space with each of them touting the safety and beauty of flying on Virgin Galactic. The video features footage from the successful SpaceShipOne flights in 2004 and animations of future flights of SpaceShipTwo including an overview of the flight profile for passengers with the 'care free' re-entry system developed by Rutan for SpaceShipOne.

With more than 300 future passengers already putting up the money for a ride in SpaceShipTwo, there appears to be strong demand for rides to the blackness of space. After a few successful flights are broadcast to the world, more people are expected to line up for a ride. And hopefully prices will drop so that some day those who want to enjoy the thrill of space flight can trade a week on the beaches of Waikiki for a view from more than 100 kilometres up.